The name is Toki Pona and means "many friends".

This is a very simple command line client for Diaspora that helps me deal with my specific use-cases:

• I want to check Diaspora for new comment on my threads
• I want to leave new comments on my threads
• I want to delete comments I left by mistake

It's very limited but it's helping me get started using the diaspy Python library.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Quickstart
• Next Step
• Notes
• Reference

We need the diaspy library. Sadly, I've run into a few issues and made some fixes. I contributed these back but just to be sure I recommend you install diaspy from my own repository. That's the one I use.

$ git clone https://alexschroeder.ch/cgit/diaspy
$ cd diaspy
$ pip3 install .

Note that using pip3 install diaspy gets me a much older revision and things won't work at all. 🤷

You need to download jan-pona-mute as well, obviously:

$ git clone https://alexschroeder.ch/cgit/jan-pona-mute

With that done, you should be able to run it:

$ python3 jan-pona-mute/jan-pona-mute.py

$ python3 jan-pona-mute.py
Welcome to Diaspora! Use the intro command for a quick introduction.
Pager set: /usr/bin/fold
> account kensanata@pluspora.com
Username and pod set: kensanata@pluspora.com
> password *secret*
Password set
> login
Setting up a connection...
Logging in...
> notifications
 1. 2019-08-13T19:40:17.000Z Joe Doe has liked your post I've started writing...
 2. 2019-08-13T17:59:23.000Z Joe Doe commented on your post Please help me wi...
 3. 2019-08-13T17:03:45.000Z Jane Doe has liked your post I've started writin...
 4. 2019-08-13T15:02:50.000Z June Doe commented on your post I don't like Mon...
 5. 2019-08-13T14:48:51.000Z John Doe liked your post Monday again! What am I...
Enter a number to select the notification.
> 1
2019-08-13T19:40:17.000Z Joe Doe has liked your post I've started writing...
Loading...

I've started writing a Diaspora client for the command line. It's called Jan Pona
Mute which means as much as "many friends" in English. It's written in Python and
doesn't do much.
> comments
There are no comments on the selected post.
> comment This is me leaving a comment.
Comment posted
> comments

 1. 2019-08-13T20:04:35.000Z Alex Schroeder

Alex Schroeder (e3bd7110b2ee013620f200505608f9fe): This is me leaving a comment.
> quit
Be safe!

Use the save command to save the login information (including the password!) to an init file.

The init files searched are:

1. ~/.config/jan-pona-mute/login
2. ~/.jan-pona-mute.d/login
3. ~/.jan-pona-mute

If one of them exists while starting up, that's the file that gets written. If none exists, the first one is going to be created by the save command.

Any further commands you put into the file are simple executed as if you were to type them every time you start the program. A simple change would be to add notifications as a command to the end of the file.

One thing I care about is editing comments with my favourite editor and previewing them. This works really well if you have mdcat as it renders Markdown. Here's the workflow:

1. check notifications
2. pick a post
3. show latest comments
4. compose a note
5. preview note
6. leave a comment with that note

This is what it looks like, assuming your editor is ed:

> notifications
...
> 1
...
> comments
...
> note nice
/home/alex/.config/jan-pona-mute/notes/nice: No such file or directory
a
OK, I like this. Thanks!
.
w
25
q
 1. nice
Use 'edit' to create a note.
> preview nice
OK, I like this. Thanks!
> comment nice

This is important: if you have a note matching the comment you're about to post, the comment is replaced with the note's content.

So much is still in flux. Please use the help command to learn more.

• use intro if you want to skip reading the rest of this list 😅

• use account, password, and login to login into your account; use save to store these three commands in your init file

• use shortcuts to show the current shortcuts; use shortcut to define a new shortcut; these are good commands to add to your init file (the save command won't do this for you)

• use notifications to see the latest notifications, use notifications reload to update the list; this is also a good command to add to your init file

• use home to see your home stream, use home reload to update the list; use home all to see the full list; use home 3 to see the last 3 items

• use show and a number to show the post a notification is referring to, or to choose a post from your home stream; use next and previous to move from item to item; this is how you select a post which allows you to use comments to show the comments for that post; use comments 3 to see the last 3 items

• use comment to post a comment, use post to write a new post; if you use a number instead of a writing a text, the number refers to a note (see below)

• use undo to delete a comment or post after writing it; use delete comment or delete post to delete them at a later date

• use edit and a filename to write a note; use notes to list your notes; use preview to show a note; use delete note to delete a note

• use editor to set your favourite editor (or set the EDITOR environment variable); use pager to set your favourite page (or set the PAGER environment variable); consider installing mdcat and using it as your pager

• use info to review your settings

• use quit to end the program